I am posting the full version of the WBC 2018 rules (see the attachment). To participate in the tournament, however, it enough just to read the short version posted by Usiek above and simply follow our instructions during the tournament.

And, as in the last year, we expect to receive many registrations in the last days before the deadline.

Many of you frequently play one-minute games on playok.com, and the WBC provides an excellent opportunity to play one-minute games for something more important than playok rating points and is the most objective existing measure of one-minute gomoku skill. Join the tournament

To register, just let Usiek, Zoli, or me know your decision to participate before the deadline. We will also need to know your playok nickname under which you will play in the tournament, your full name, citizenship, and how you can be contacted in Internet. The playok nickname should start with wbc (e.g., wbcpuholek).

P.S. There is a small mistake in the preliminary schedule I posted above - one round in the double elimination stage was accidentally skipped, namely the match between the loser of the final of the upper bracket and the remaining participant of the lower bracket. I have attached the corrected schedule below.

Do you want to compete with the WBC experts and show your expertise? Take part in the assessment competition, which we announce now and is open to everyone!

The WBC experts are seven people who are currently assessing the strength of each of the 64 group stage participants for the purpose of performing the random draw. The names of the WBC experts are: Denis Osipov, Gergő Tóth, Igor Eged, Ilya Muratov, Łukasz Majksner, Vladimir Nipoti, and Zoltán László.

Make your own assessment of the group stage participants and win the title of the best assessor!

Your assessment has to be a list of 32 players sorted by their strength and starting with the strongest, but what matters here is only whom you consider to be the best, to be in the top 2, top 4, top 8, top 16, and top 32.

You will get one point for each player who is assessed by you to be in the top 32 and ends up being in the actual top 32, one point for each player who is assessed by you to be in the top 16 and ends up being in the actual top 16, and so on.

For example, correctly predicting the winner will bring you 6 points, because he is in the actual top 32, in the actual top 16, in the actual top 8, in the actual top 4, in the actual top 2, and the winner.

One clarification: The actual top 32 (or 16, 8, etc.) players are defined as the last remaining 32 (or 16, 8, etc.) players, i.e., what decides here is the moment of elimination from the tournament.

We will publish all assessments and scores and declare the best assessor.

The WBC experts automatically participate in this assessment competition, but their assessments and scores will be shown under masks "Expert 1," "Expert 2," etc. This is because of the WBC rules, which we have to obey.

To participate in this assessment competition, just send your assessment to me (fb.com/profile.php?id=100011333320097, sandragomoku@gmail.com, or vk.com/id372140299) before Sun 11 Feb 21:00 Warsaw time. The earlier the better - this is the tie-breaking criterion

For your convenience, the full list of the group stage participants together with their normal playok nicknames and current ratings on them is provided below.

The period of the group stage is Mon 12 Feb - Sun 4 Mar (three weeks).

Good luck to the participants!

Spectators, regularly check the schedule of matches - interesting battles are coming. Ninety six matches will be played in a period of just three weeks, which means about five matches per day on average.

P.S. Tomorrow evening I will post the assessments made by the experts as well as by the participants of the assessment competition.

I have attached the assessments made by the WBC experts, so now you can see how strong each player was assessed to be

The assessments were made for the purpose of two random draws. One random draw has already been performed to create the groups, and the other random draw will be performed after the group stage to create the scheme of the double elimination stage. Exactly how the assessments were and will be used for the purpose of the random draws is explained on page 3 of the attached document.

P.S. Later today I will also post the assessments made by the participants of the assessment competition

As in the last year, you can bet on piskvorky.cz on WBC matches just like on EL, IRP, and CL matches and win a magnetic gomoku board!

Here is how it works, in short:

1. You register and get 100 virtual crowns, which you can use to make bets.

2. Each match has quoted odds. You can choose matches to bet on, and you can also combine your bets together - a combination wins if all its bets win, and in this case the corresponding coefficients are multiplied.

3. The bettor who accumulates the largest amount of virtual crowns at the end of the season will be the winner and will get a magnetic gomoku board.

The opening match of the WBC double elimination stage will be played tonight at 18:00 Warsaw time, and the honour to play in this opening match belongs to two prominent Czech masters - Vladimir Nipoti (aka Bano) and těpán Tesařík (aka Peroxid)!

Vladimir is considered to be one of the main candidates for the WBC title, as he was ranked 4th by the experts and is well-known to be one of the very best blitz players in the world. He is also currently 5th on the live gomoku ranking list and has extensive experience of playing live as he has participated in about three dozens of live tournaments shown on gomokuworld.com.

těpán participated in more than 50 live tournaments shown on gomokuworld.com and is quite a strong player as he finished 3rd in the B-tournament of the last world championship and won the first ever European team championship as a member of the Czech team. He is one the most prominent people in the Czech gomoku community and plays an important role in organising tournaments and promoting gomoku.

To watch the match, go to http://www.playok.com/en/gomoku, click on "GUEST" (unless you want to register an account or use an already registered nickname of yours), change the playing room to "#300... dobrocin," click on the table with the nicknames wbcb and wbcperoxid, and enjoy this Czech derby